most common names.

[ifancylust.livejournal.com]

i work for a service called chacha as a guide. basically, people text or call in with any question they want an answer to, a guide researches for them, then texts them back an answer. anyway, tonight somebody asked me, "what's the most common name for a male in the US?" i did some research and found out that the answer is james. no surprise there.

i decided to look around the website a little bit and found it really interesting. it had thousands of the most common male, female, and last names in the US. the male names didn't surprise me at all: john, david, michael, etc. but i was a little surprised by the female names. they have thousands on there, but here are the top 20 in order:



MARY
PATRICIA
LINDA
BARBARA - i know this is a common name, but i never thought it'd come in 4th.
ELIZABETH
JENNIFER
MARIA
SUSAN
MARGARET
DOROTHY - this one really surprises me. i've never met or even known of a dorothy in my entire life.
LISA
NANCY
KAREN
BETTY - i *think* that the site doesn't go solely by birth names, but also on what the person just goes by because there are names like debbie and lizzie on the list
HELEN
DONNA
CAROL
RUTH
SHARON

here are some names i found amongst the 1,000 most common names that i was kind of shocked to see:
WANDA at #87 - i never would've guessed it'd be in the top 100
EUNICE at #326 - apparently there are over 80,000 women with this name. ...really?? i kind of figured they'd all be long gone by now. =/
BEULAH at #360 - i feel terrible for over 70,000 women. :(
JOHNNIE at #391
ELVIRA at #460
DELORIS at #515 - i've never ever seen this spelling.
CONSUELO at #577 - i thought this was more of a male's name. guess not?
JIMMIE at #667
SOCORRO at #673 - never heard this before
LADONNA at #687
OFELIA at #704 - same as "deloris"
BETTYE at #712 - ditto
CONCEPCION at #748 - o_O
TOMMIE at #778
MICHAEL at #799
EARLENE at #811
JOHN at #819 - WHAT??
JAMES at #875
YOUNG at #902
CHERRY at #922
QUEEN at #923
PANSY at #983
ROBERT at #996
THOUGHTS?


the site in case you're interested: http://names.mongabay.com/